International Efforts Continue to Falter

December 2007

Peacekeeping authority is transferred from the previous African Union force to a joint A.U.-U.N. force as ordered by the U.N. Security Council. But the Sudanese government undercuts the mission with a list of bureaucratic hurdles, which Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno reported to the Security Council in November.

Returning to its earlier demand for an all-African force, Sudan refuses troops from Thailand, Nepal, Norway and Sweden. It also withholds land promised to the mission, restricts U.N. helicopter deployments, refuses U.N. aircraft permission to fly at night, reserves the authority to shut down peacekeepers' communications during government military operations, and proposes that peacekeepers must provide "advance notification to the Government for all staff, troop and asset movements related to UNAMID."

January 2008

As the joint U.N.-A.U. force takes over, President Bush tightens U.S. sanctions against Sudan by signing the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act. It authorizes state and local governments in the U.S. "to divest assets in companies that conduct business operations in Sudan, to prohibit United States Government contracts with such companies, and for other purposes."

But within hours, American diplomat John Granville and his driver are gunned down in Khartoum, and a Sudanese Army officer is later arrested in connection with the shooting. The same month, the U.N. accuses Sudanese soldiers of firing on a convoy of peacekeepers.

May 2008

The fragile 2005 peace agreement between northern Khartoum and the semi-autonomous southern Sudan government is on the verge of collapse, after fighting in late May "obliterates" the town of Abyei, which lies in a contested oil-rich region on the north-south border.

A Foreign Affairs analysis published this month has former U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew S. Natsios examining how the spiraling violence in western and southern Sudan may drag the entire country to "disintegration." Describing how entwined the conflicts have become (he asserts, for example, that janjaweed leader Musa Hilal was given his government position to prevent his defection to the South) Natsios argues that the international community should pursue diplomacy rather than military intervention. (A U.S. diplomatic document recently obtained by The New York Times indicates the U.S. may be heading in just such a direction.)

June 2008

Nearly a year has passed since the U.N. Security Council ordered the creation of a joint U.N.-A.U. peacekeeping force of 26,000 troops. The force still has only 9,000 troops, lacks equipment that it has requested from member states and continues to be stymied by political obstacles.

Meanwhile, two men indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court remain at large: Ahmad Harun was named minister of humanitarian affairs -- giving the suspected janjaweed organizer oversight of peacekeepers and refugees -- and Ali Kushayb was captured but released. Another suspected janjaweed ringleader, Musa Hilal, was named as a special adviser to the Khartoum government. Sudanese ambassador to the U.N. Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem has denied that the government is interfering in peacekeeping efforts and insists that the charges brought by the ICC are false.

Experts continue to debate the wisdom of intervention: Sudan scholar Alex de Waal, who critiqued the peacekeeping plan when he was interviewed for FRONTLINE's report, On Our Watch, wrote in his essay "Why Darfur intervention is a mistake" that "UN patrols around the displaced camps could stop many of these [civilian] killings and monitors following army operations can deter others. I am all for this. But let us not pretend that they would stop the war." And in a piece for The New York Times, Warren Hoge considers Darfur's wider implications for the United Nations' "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine.

The Widening Regional Crisis

As of June 2008, human rights violations and killings in Darfur, which reached their peak in 2003 and 2004, have evolved into a regional conflict cutting across rebel groups and governments in Darfur, southern Sudan and neighboring Chad.

In April 2008 a resurgence of government-sponsored violence in Darfur targeted the increasingly powerful Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) militia, which, in the following month, launched an under-equipped and failed assault on Khartoum. The Washington Post and others reported that the JEM attack was supported by elements within the Sudanese government and by the government of Chad.

But intrigues between Chad and Sudan are nothing new. When Chad repelled a rebel attack on its capital of Ndjamena in February, Chadian President Idriss Deby and the government of France accused Sudan of supporting the rebellion to interfere with a European Union mission to protect Darfur's refugees. And despite a temporary peace accord reached in the wake of that attack, Sudan in May 2008 severed diplomatic ties with Chad after another JEM attack, reigniting tensions along the border. In April, the Times' Lydia Polgreen reported on how cross-border skirmishing is exacerbating conditions in Darfur.

China, Sudan and the "Genocide Olympics"

On Feb. 12, 2008 Steven Spielberg resigned as artistic adviser for the games, putting a major dent in China's efforts to insulate the Beijing Olympics from critiques of Chinese foreign policy. In a public statement, Spielberg said: "I have made repeated efforts to encourage the Chinese government to use its unique influence to bring safety and stability to the Darfur region of Sudan. ... Sudan's government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these on-going crimes but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing human suffering there." In response, a Chinese official quoted in The New York Times said, "As the Darfur issue is neither an internal issue of China nor is it caused by China, it is completely unreasonable, irresponsible and unfair to link the two as one."

China continues to maintain that the traditionally apolitical Olympics are an inappropriate venue for protests of its foreign policy, but there are signs that the regime is responding to international pressure: The Chinese have reportedly provided teams of engineers to Darfur to help build infrastructure for refugees and peacekeepers; in late February, a Chinese special envoy traveled to Khartoum to publicly pressure the Sudanese to assist U.N. peacekeepers; and in February 2008, China announced it would resume human rights talks with the U.S., which it had suspended since 2004. These steps have not swayed Darfur protestors, however.

Mia Farrow's group, Dream for Darfur, caused a stir with its campaign to hold Olympic corporate sponsors accountable for their participation in the games, which included a report card released in April that gave grades of D or F to 15 out of 19 "top Olympic sponsors, among them Visa, Coke and Swatch, for the companies' persistent refusal to take any meaningful step to help bring security to war-torn Darfur."

Many of the companies fired back, saying that Dream for Darfur's criteria, which focused on companies' willingness to pressure the U.N. or Sudanese government, were too narrow and unfairly ignored their material donations to relief efforts. In a pointed op-ed in the Financial Times, Coca-Cola CEO Neville Isdell argued that a corporation's "inherently and appropriately limited" role did not extend to publicly criticizing governments or the Olympic Games. Farrow's criticism has continued, with the actress/activist calling the companies "cowards."

Olympians are also struggling with the politics surrounding the games. While the International Olympic Committee has invoked its "Rule 51" to prohibit political demonstrations at Olympic sites, outspoken athletes such as Jessica Mendoza and other members of "Team Darfur" have so far been candid with their views. 2006 gold medalist Joey Cheek appeared in The Washington Post to advocate using the games as a protest platform.